Heartbreak Read Free Page B

up. His eyes look like they’re lit from the inside out, a knowing light he must have hidden from me all this time—along with his dark desires. His voice is barely a whisper. “What makes you think you could stop me?”
    Fear clenches my chest, and I scramble away, half expecting him to hold me there. He lets me go, though, and I scoot a few feet back. I’m afraid, but I know that if I really thought he’d hurt me, I’d be running. Instead I crouch on the dusty floorboards and hug my knees.
    “You’re just saying that to scare me,” I say, accusing.
    He sits up too, much more leisurely. “Maybe I am. Doesn’t mean I’m lying.”
    No, I have the uncomfortable feeling it’s not a lie. Except he hasn’t done those things to me. “Why haven’t you touched me?”
    His hot gaze sweeps over me. “I’ve touched you, beautiful.”
    “Not under my clothes. And you definitely haven’t—” Anxiety and something else rises in my throat. He hasn’t taken me from behind. He hasn’t taken me at all. “You haven’t tied me up or any perverted shit.”
    He smiles, ducks his head, looking almost shy and boyish at the word perverted. “Because you aren’t ready for that.”
    “What do you care?” I can’t help the bitterness that seeps into my voice. “I’m just some random girl at some random foster house. Any one of us could get moved tomorrow, and we’d never see each other again.”
    His expression grows solemn. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
    There’s a dollhouse up here, old and cracked from disuse. I run my finger across a faded white porch railing. “We’re like the dolls in this house. They move us around wherever they want, like we don’t matter.”
    “You’re right,” he says softly. “They don’t care about us. They don’t understand. But I care, beautiful. I care about you more than I should.”
    The words burrow inside me where I can keep them. No matter where I go after this, no matter how far away I am from him, I’ll always remember this. “Me too,” I whisper.
    He puts two fingers under my chin and tilts my face up to his. “And I’m waiting because I’d rather not have you at all than hurt you.”
    “I thought you wanted to hurt me.”
    “Only when you want it.”
    I have to laugh. “You’re crazy if you think I’d ever want that. ”
    Sex is one thing. Tie ups are another.
    He just shrugs, easy with my denial. He wasn’t going to push me before this conversation, and he isn’t going to push me now. He isn’t going to demand sex now, isn’t going to demand any of that kinky shit now either. He’s content to talk to me, to kiss me, and something eases inside me at the knowledge.
    A beat passes, and I scoot closer to him. He wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me close—he’s always touching me when I’m near. Careful touches. Heated touches. Possessive touches. This one feels achingly tender.
    From this spot in the cramped attic we can look through the grimy window and see the city stretch out—the high-rises with lights blinking off and on. They might be ants living in little glass squares.
    That’s just an illusion. The people downtown are rich and powerful.
    We’re the small and insignificant ones, liable to get crushed under their shoes if we’re not careful.
    “He wasn’t a kid.” Blue’s voice rings out in the dark, and it takes me half a second to realize what he’s talking about.
    The rumors. That you killed a kid at your last school.
    My hands clench into fists at my sides, but if he couldn’t scare me before, he won’t scare me now. And I realize that may be what he meant to do. To push me away before the truth came out. But I’m still here.
    “Who was it?” I ask, my voice trembling. I have enough courage to stick around but not enough to hide how scared this makes me. I’ve been around violence all my life, the kind that bruises, the kind that stings, but not the kind that kills.
    He’s quiet a long moment. “Same old